Hollywood Celebrities Show the Way to Bribe Your Kid into College

Hollywood actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin were among the 50 people caught in a federal sweep investigating an alleged elaborate college cheating scam. It’s the most large scale college admissions scam ever prosecuted by the Department of Justice.

Lori Loughlin is famous for her role as Rebecca Donaldson-Katsopolis on the hit 90s ABC show Full House, as well as the recent Netflix sequel Fuller House. Lynette Scavo is famous for her role as Lynette Scavo on the ABC television series Desperate Housewives.

According to court filings released Tuesday, Huffman and Loughlin were named among those charged by the U.S. Department of Justice with paying money to guarantee their children entrance to some of America’s most elite colleges.

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DOJ Says Rich Parents’ Kids Paid to Play

The DOJ says that in exchange for payments, professional scammers using elaborate and unethical methods- ranging from faking standardized test scores to bribing school officials like coaches and SAT / ACT test administrators- guaranteed parents their childrens’ admission into some of the world’s most competitive colleges.

The elite college admissions cheating operation is alleged to have guaranteed customers placement in such prestigious and competitive schools as Yale, Georgetown, Stanford, University of Southern California, UCLA, and the University of Texas.

The U.S. names William Rick Singer of California as the leader of the ongoing college admissions scam. Government officials have been investigating Singer for over a year in a case named “Operation Varsity Blues.”

College Bubble Pops

Will the college bubble finally pop yet?

This elaborate cheating scam has minted a number of essentially counterfeit, high-end, branded university college diplomas for their customers, further diminishing the value of an already highly overvalued, overpriced asset in America- a college degree.

The value of college degrees is already collapsing.

It was a decade ago that the Wall Street Journal reported in an articled titled, “The Declining Value of Your College Degree,” that:

“A four-year college degree, seen for generations as a ticket to a better life, is no longer enough to guarantee a steadily rising paycheck…

For decades, the typical college graduate’s wage rose well above inflation. But no longer. In the economic expansion that began in 2001 and now appears to be ending, the inflation-adjusted wages of the majority of U.S. workers didn’t grow, even among those who went to college. The government’s statistical snapshots show the typical weekly salary of a worker with a bachelor’s degree, adjusted for inflation, didn’t rise last year from 2006 and was 1.7% below the 2001 level.”

And in addition to no longer guaranteeing job prospects or salaries the way they did last century, college degrees are losing so much value because they offer little to no real world experience, and it’s easier than ever to learn anything you want to become knowledge about and specialize in without a college degree.

An Epidemic of Faked Scholarship at Universities

According to a highly-cited socialist scientist, philosopher, best selling author, and popular lecturer, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto named Dr. Jordan Peterson, 80% of academic papers in the social sciences are never even read:

Other academic sources say 98% of research papers in the humanities, and 75% in social sciences are never cited. Meanwhile in the hard sciences where 25% of papers are never cited, those that are have an average of between one and two citations only.

America’s colleges are creating a seriously massive amount of product that literally no one is using, and burning through billions of dollars a year to do it. Massive federal subsidies for colleges worth hundreds of billions get pulled in by the scam every year on top of the tuition payments contributed by the students who are saddled with life debts to pay for it.

It’s one of the worst scams ever perpetrated on the American people. That’s why fewer Americans believe a college degree is worth what universities charge for them.

And now it seems some of the wealthy elite’s kids in America are routinely paying to get a fake version of an already overpriced, very fake certificate of knowledge and job worthiness.

If that isn’t a hyperreal simulacrum of a Baudrillard Matrix I don’t know what is

And all these Millennials could have used a library card or Google for free.

About The Author

Grew up reading Isaac Asimov, J.R.R. Tolkien, The Bible, Ayn Rand, John Locke, and Robert Heinlein while listening to conservative talk radio, reading used economics textbooks, and reading through most mainstream political newspapers and magazines.